Who we are:

The owners of Naturally Solar, Mark Sofianos and Mark Andrews have over 40 years business experience in Southern Africa. They have, between the two of them,set up and successfully run several companies across South Africa varying from packaging manufacture, import and distribution to plant hire, tourism in rural areas and the commercial airline sector.

It all started in Malawi when Mark Andrews and Mark Sofianos took their families on an outdoor adventure holiday and at one of the bush camps were handed these handy lanterns.As outdoor and 4x4 enthusiasts they had never seen anything in South Africa quite like this and realised the huge potential of such a product, and the impact it would make to the lives of the rural communitees.

Coming home we started looking for manufacturers, ran our own R & D and started to test a variety of lanterns. The Solar Buddy is manufactured in China to our development standards and has evolved into a quality unit with improved LED’s and battery quality.

The Naturally Solar Support Team are:

Marina Wareham

Sales and Marketing and Administrative Manger

The newest member to the team, Marina comes from a background in the LED and Solar industry having owned and managed her own business. Marina shares a passion for people and will be promoting Naturally Solar as well as assisting in various Solar Buddy campaigns and projects. She is also a bookkeeper and will see to all accounting and management functions within the businesses.

Lisa Mnamatha

Administrative Support and order processing

Lisa joined Naturally Solar in 2015 and assists with administration, processing and packing of orders as well as assisting with Solar Buddy campaigns and projects.

Gail Sofianos

Administrator and Project coordinator Solar Buddy Foundation

Along with the desire to start a new company, our family wanted to also reach out and touch the lives of the community around us. We therefore set up the Solar Buddy Foundation where for every light sold R5.00 goes into a trust so that lights can be purchased through this trust and distributed to needy communities. Our vision for this project is to see it grow from strength to strength and for other organisations to climb on board in assisting us in giving light to Africa.